Silicon Valley African Film Festival

The Silicon Valley African Film Festival (SVAFF) promotes an understanding and appreciation of Africa and Africans through moving images. Aptly themed “Africa through the African lens", the film festival celebrates the vast richness of the African Continent through the lenses of Africa’s seasoned and emerging filmmakers and, crucially, provides audiences with exquisite lenses to the real Africa. Each year, the festival presents a full menu of feature and short length narrative, documentary and animation films from over 30 African countries. From Ghana to Uganda, Tunisia to Tanzania, Nigeria to Namibia, Senegal to South Africa, the diversity of voices represented in our films engage, delight, inspire, provoke and challenge our audience. Programs of the film festival include: • Annual Film Festival: SVAFF’s flagship program is the annual film festival weekend showcase that is held in October. Highlights include: a Red Carpet walk and VIP reception, parade of flags of the countries in the festival, libation ceremony, film screenings, live performances, an African marketplace, fashion show, visual arts exhibition, dialogue with filmmakers in attendance, panel discussions, community forums, food, awards, etc. Over 50% of the films screened at SVAFF are World / North America premieres. • African Cinema Cafe Series: The African Cinema Café Series is SVAFF's community outreach, partnership and audience development program. It is a year-round community screenings of films in community spaces. It offers us the opportunity to use film as a vehicle for dialogue and celebrate its power to inspire and catalyze change. • Africa in the Classroom Film Series: The Africa in the Classroom Film Series brings curriculum related films to local elementary, middle and high schools for use in classrooms. Schools are also granted access to our rich library of African films that cover a vast range of topics and many teachers use our films to animate their Africa units.